Of all the ironies

Jul 17, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – What is unfolding in Guyana promises the revolutionary, a word rarely used. I see irony also. What may turn out to be catalytic and cathartic emerge from the strangest source. Instead of catalytic and cathartic, though most fitting to times and tempers, what is changing and healing rests better, feels well. Look at what’s making a difference, who, then how.

It’s thicker than molasses, but sulfurous. Like the old Buckley’s Cough Mixture bitter and mysterious, but packing a powerful punch, and yet healing. The stubborn thins, departs. That’s the first irony. The second is not spoken about much, though it’s that 800-lb rooster that crows a million words at the highest pitch. It is viscous and has a vicious history, somehow piecing also. The grand patrimony is giving a glimpse of what is revolutionary.

For the first time in three quarters of a century, Guyanese are thinking less, focused less, and talking less of the PPP and PNC. Now that’s revolutionary, the most perplexing irony. Apologies, but those two political big cats had to be dragged into the house. Now tangle with this irony-a bigger, sprawling one-a man who can’t talk, a competitor with no plan, a citizen under heavy sanction, and Guyanese react enthusiastically, boldly. Politics is about words and the new man has few, maybe none, to offer. The contestant that is evoking so much interest, inspiring so much hope, provoking so much dread is alleged to be a gangster. At the risk of correction, he hasn’t been strenuous in shaking off that albatross stuck to his neck. So, he stands an uncertain, even anxious, figure in a sea of blue, before a lake of microphones. But he is furnishing some degree of what is catalytic and cathartic. Or looked upon to be that mender and master of Guyana tomorrow. Ironic and revolutionary in the same breath, definitely the same thought, same sentence.

It’s timely for the personal. I defend no one, recommend no one, endorse no one. I may not even exercise that right on that first day of the ninth month. Standing above the fray, affords that bird’s eye view of the milieu. It is a heaving, expectant, one. A malevolent, repugnant one. Disfigured, vindictive, gruesome also. With that said, it’s back to basics, sharing my thinking.

The learned and experienced heroes of Guyana can gleam with majestic streaks of scintillating brilliance at a hundred words a minute. But they got too haughty, flew too close to the sun, dared the gods. Considering their stewardship of the thick underwater stuff, their words don’t have their ancient, unquestioned weight. The people are tired. The new man can barely put a few phrases together in a short string, but the people give him a listening ear. They find him inspiring, pulse pounding. Indeed, the veterans are that bad, assessed to be that traitorous. The Guyanese people are sick and tired of being deceived, used, made fools of, then abused and taken for granted. The people grab at anything, anyone who offers them succor, even what’s wordless. No university can provide the ferment, such a laboratory of learning, like life itself. Guyanese are getting that learning right now, and with a difference. They are liking it, going over the possibilities, without any specific guideposts and mileposts to help them along.

I invite thinking of this. Should most Guyanese come across a barrel of their patrimony, they may mistake it for tar or the thickest black disinfectant, maybe even molasses, if they can overlook the smell. But they know how it has been used as a weapon against them. To divide them deeper. To cheat them barefacedly. To trick and mislead them worse than ever before. Having lived the blues at its most wretched, they reach for the blue. If I were a man of the kind that infects Guyana’s political fields, maybe I would also lash him with the bludgeon of sanctions. A bell rung, an outcast identified, a leper is on the way. Sanctions stand in place of the old leprosy. The unhealed seen as offering healing. Recall what I tabled earlier: this irony of ironies.

What will be his fate? I cannot depart without touching. Body slammed, pile driven, neck breaker, and head crusher should all be forthcoming, litter his days. And there is the captivating virtuosity of AI recently introduced (and coming from here soon). I purposely used the language of American wrestling, because Guyana’s politics is the best imitation. Brawling, bashing, goring, brutalizing, rubbishing. From drones to local cops to US cops. From taxmen used as swordsmen to political desperadoes unleashed to deal with the new outlaw, the tribal renegade. It is not wrestling. Nor is it entertainment. It is the revolution and irony underway in Guyana. Fasten your seatbelts, and enjoy the ride. Some turbulence ahead.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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• catalytic, cathartic, GHK Lall, Ironies, PPP, revolutionary

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